About

Bicycle Book Review is dedicated to the world of cycling and bicycle books. The idea is to use the review of books on cycling history, bicycle racing and bicycle craftsmanship, to explore cycling in a leisurely, literate and thoughtful way. Most of the prominent cycling sites concentrate on racing results and the news of the day and consequently don’t have room for this type of content. The concept for bicycle book review is to take the subject of cycling literature seriously in the same manner than the New York Review of Books, the London Review or the Claremont Review does with books on a variety of subjects.

Contributions: Well written contributions are welcome. Please make them long enough to summarize the book or books you are reviewing and give a fair and honest assessment of their strengths and weaknesses. If you know or have a relationship with the writer, please note that in a forthright way. The review should be in your real name. It would be nice to have some contributors list their all-time favorite cycling books and there will be a Cycling Books for Christmas Page around Thanksgiving that you can link to for families who have a member with a cycling affliction.

Comments are welcome. We appreciate, intelligent, insightful comments on the reviews themselves or the subjects of the books under review. Please, if at all possible, use your real name as this is the only way we can make the writers on the Internet accountable for the things they write. The anonymity of the web often serve to lower discourse to a base level of serve and volley attacks. Comments can be contentious, but friendly. Remember, almost everyone commenting here will care about cycling and its future, but there will be philosophical differences between our approaches to the issues. Any comments that are insulting, ad hominem, or that rely on scatological language or curse words to make a point will be deleted. If you would be embarrassed to have someone you know read your comment, it is probably a good idea to use some discretion. While the subject of drug use in professional cycling does come up in some of these reviews, the idea of this site is not to concentrate on the single most contentious aspect of bicycle racing or make this a forum for the subject. Humorous comments are welcome as the idea is to take the subject of cycling seriously, not ourselves. The content here will be biased toward the masculine because there is not a very large sample of books to do with women’s cycling, but any contributions, essays or books on female cyclists will be welcome.

Contributors: Jeffrey Morseburg has been involved with cycling for most of his life as a rider, team director, coach, manager, race promoter, publicist, photographer, driver, chief cook and bottle washer. That’s the way cycling is or was at one time. There were hundreds of riders who raced for the teams he ran and they won more than a dozen national championships and over seventy state championships. His teams included riders from Great Britian, Norway, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Mexico, Chile and New Zealand. Some of the later generations of riders went on to ride for major United States and European professional teams and to win a number United States Professional Championships. Fortunately, only one of them went on to rob dozens of banks using his bicycle as a getaway vehicle. He served on the Board of Directors for the Southern California Cycling Federation for many years, the Board of Directors for the United States Cycling Federation and the Board of Directors for the Encino Velodrome. Morseburg promoted many events including District Road and Track Championships, the Far West Track Championships, the International Madison Championships, the Acton Road Race, the Lancaster Road Race, the La Canada Criterium, one edition of the Rose Bowl Road Race, The V. A. Criterium, the San Fernando Criterium, the Nisei Week Criterium and some other events he has forgotten. He wrote about bicycle racing for a number of departed publications including but not limited to the S.C.C.F. News, Peloton, Echelon, Southwest Cycling, California Cyclist and a few that survived including Cycling U.S.A. and the original incarnation of Velo News when Barbara George was publisher.